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SPEECH 



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FRANCIS P. BLAIR, JR., 

OF MISSOURI, 



ON THE 



ACQUISITION OF CENTRAL AMERICA; 



DELIVERED 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 14, 18i3S 



WASHINGTON: 

£*amTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE. 

1858. 



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ACQUISITION OE CENTRAL AMEEICA, 



The House having resolved itself into the Commiueo of 
the Whole on the state of the Union, and resumed the con- 
sideration of the President's annual message- 
Mr. BLAIR said: 

Mr. Chairman: Wheiiever it shall be in order, 
I shall offer to' the House the following resolution, 
which covers the ground that I propose to discuss: 
Resolved, That a select committee, to consist of mem- 
bers, be appointed by the Speaker, with instructions to in- 
quire into the expediency of providing for the acquisition 
of territory cither in the Central or South American States, 
to be colonized with colored persons from the United States 
who are now free, or vv-ho may hereafter become free, and 
who may be willing to settle in such territory as a depend- 
ency of the United States, with ample guarantees of their 
personal and political rights. 

It was remarked by a gentleman from Tennes- 
see [Mr. MAYNTAnD] the other day, on this floor, 
that he had hoped and believed that this question 
would be discussed and disposed of without ref- 
erence to the subject of slavery, because, he said, 
there were no slaves in Central America. The 
inquiry was made immediately, by many around 
me, " How long will it be before there are slaves 
there?" This inquiry shows, what is almost 
universally felt to be true, that the slavery ques- 
tion is at the bottom of this whole movement. 
There is a party in this country who go for the 
extension of slavery; and these predatory incur- 
sions against our neighbors are the means by 
which territory is to be seized, planted with sla- 
very, annexed to this Union, and, in combination 
with the present slaveholding States, made to 
dominate this Government, and the entire conti- 
nent; or, failing in the policy oi annexation, to 
unite with the slave States in a southern slave- 
holding Republic. I believe that there are those 



who entertain such a purpose. I am opposed to 
thevwhole scheme, and to every part of it; and, in 
order to oppose it .successfully, I think we should 
recur to the plans cherished by the great men who 
founded this Republic. I think we ought to put 
it out of the power of any body of men to plant 
slavery anywhere on this continent, by taking 
immediate steps to give to all of these countries 
that require it, and especially to the Central Amer- 
ican States, the power to sustain free institutions 
under stable governments; and, as one method 
of doing this, we might plant those countries with 
a class of men who are worse than useless to us, 
who would prove themselves to be of immense 
advantage to those countries, who would attract 
the wealth and energy of our best men to aid and 
direct them in developing the incredible riches of 
those regions, and thus open them to our com- 
merce, and the commerce of the whole world. I 
refer to our enfranchised slaves, all of that class 
who would willingly enibrace the offer to form 
themselves into a colony under the protection of. 
■our flag, and the guar-.ntee of the Republic of 
every personal and pohtical right necessary to 
their safety and prosperity. 

What I propose is not new; it is bottomed on 
the reasoning and reconimendation of Mr. Jeffer- 
son. Speaking of a proposition, similar in many 
respects, urged by him upon the Legislature of 
his native State, he says: 

" It was, however, found that the public mind would not 
yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day ; 
yet the day is not far distant when it must bear it and adopt 
it or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written 
ill the liook of fate, than that these people (tlie negroes) are 
to be free ; nor is it less certain that the two races, equal y 



"^ 



free, cannot live in the same Government. Nature, habit, 
opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction between 
them. It is still in our power to direct the process of eman- 
cipation AND DEPORTATION, and in such slow degree as 
that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be 
pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If, on the con- 
trary, itisleftto force itself on, human nature inustshudder 
at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an ex- 
ampleinthe Spanish deportation or deletion oftheMoors." 

The time has ripened for the execution of Mr. 
Jefferson's plan. By adopting it, we may relieve 
ourselves of a people who are a burden to us; 
give to them an amount of happiness and comfort 
they can never realize here, where they are treated 
as a degraded class; reinvigorate the feeble people 
of the southern Republics, and open up to the en- 
terprise of our merchants the untold wealth of the 
intertropical region, containing a greater amount 
of productive land than all the balance of the con- 
tinent; put a stop to the African slave trade, which 
is created and kept up by the demand for tropical 
productions; by supplying that demand by the 
labor of the only class of freemen capable of exer- 
tion in that climate. I make this proposition to 
meet, oppose, and defeat that which seeks by vio- 
lence to reestablish slavery, reopen the African 
slave trade, subject those regions, in Walker's 
own language, "to mi/(/«rj/nt/e, "and exclude from 
them the people of the northern States. I shall 
discuss and compare these propositions as fully 
as the time limited will allow me. 

Mr. R,andolpli, in one of his most celebrated 
speeches in the Senate, addressing himself to Mr. 
Calhoun, said: 

" Sir, I know there are gentlemen, not only from the 
southern, hut the northern States, who think that this 
unhappy question — for such it is — of negro slavery, which 
the Constitution has vainly attempted to blink by not using 
the term, should never bo brought into public notice, more 
especially into that of Congress, and most especially Iiere. 
Sir, with every due respect for the gentlemen who think so, 
I differ with them toto calo. Sir, it is a thing wliich cannot 
be hid. It is not a dry rot that you can cover with a carpet 
until the house tumbles about your ears. You might as well 
try to hide a volcano in full operation. It cannot be hid; it 
is a cancer on your face, and must not be lanipcrod with 
by quacks, who never saw the disease or Ihe patient, and 
prescribe across the .'Vllaulic. It must be, if jou will, let 
alone. 

" I!ut no, sir ; the politico-religious quacks, like the quack 
in medicine and in everything else, will hear of nothing 
but his nostrum ; all is to be forced— nothing can betrusiod 
t'l lime or to nature. The disease has run its course ; it h.as 
run its eninse in the northern States, it is beginning to run 
its course in i\laryland. The natural death of slavery is 
the unprofitableness of its most expensive labor, it is also 
beginning in the meadow and grain country of Virginia — 
among tliose people there who have no staple that can i)ay 
for slave labor. " 

He then points his concluaion in a way to make 



it stick in the memories of the masters of slaves, 
to whom he addressed himself: 

" The moment the labor of the slave ceases to ba profit- 
able to the master, or very soon after it has reached that 
stage, if Ihe slave will not run away from the muster, the 
master will run away from the slave.'' 

Mr. Chairman,! am Mr. Randolph's proselyte; 
he was no Abolitionist, although aware that sla- 
very was sapping the very foundations of the free 
institutions of his country — a cancer on the face, 
which, unless removed, would eat into the vitals 
of the Republic. I concur in his opinion, that the 
master must run away from his slaves, unless 
they run away from him. Unhappily fortlie skive 
Slates, many of their enterprising young men leave 
their native land for those States where individual 
ability and exertion are sufficient to confer wealth 
and eminence ; and all of that oppressed class v/ho 
are compelled to labor with their naked hands, 
and struggle for existence in competition with the 
monopolizing slave power that holds the soil, and 
bands together, by a common interest, the capital, 
the intelligence, and influence of the order con- 
trolling the government of the Commonwealth to 
make it paramount, would also fly, if they had the 
means of flight, or a spot on earth they could call 
their own to receive them. Although the time has 
not yet come when the masters are ready to run 
away from their slaves, it will doubtless come, 
if ever that great mass of freemen who feel the 
weight of the institution pressing them to the 
earth, should have the means of reaching home- 
steads in happier regions, where their labor might 
render them independent. Can any condition be 
more lamentable for a State than that which makes 
it the obvious interest of the mass of its free pop- 
ulation to abandon it.' and if poverty prevents 
this desertion, the cause of detention, constantly 
increasing, must in the end grow into a frightful 
calamity. 

Every statesman who has looked into the con- 
dition of the slave States, has always found it full 
of difficulties. Mr. Randolph's solution does not 
end them, unless iwe go a step further. Where 
would the slaves go if they could run away .- The 
North may receive an absconding straggler here 
and there, but what States would receive five mil- 
lion of slaves.' or how would the runaways be any- 
where provided for.' The free Stales which have 
put an interdict, so far away as remote Oregon, 
I upon the admission of free blacks, even in the 
, stinted number which might come from the lim- 
I ited emancipation piM-mitted in the South, would 
hardly receive millionsuponageneraljaildelivery. 
Nor can the masters run away from their slaves, 
i unless the North is ready to become a St. Domingo ; 



5 



nor emancipate them en masse without making it 
a St. Domingo. 

Mr. Randolph had a grave meaning in the al- 
ternatives he suggests for the riddance of slavery, 
although its strong sense, as usual with him, is 
pointed with sarcasm. His will shows how the 
slaves were to run away from their masters. That 
testament delivers a practical lesson to his State, 
more pregnant with sage advice than any ever re- 
ceived from his eloquent lips, on which she hung 
with such rapture. 

The jirst and second bequests read thus: 

" 1. I give and bequeath to my slaves their freedom, 
heartily regretting that I have ever been the owner of one. 

"2. I give to my e.tecutors a sum not exceeding eight 
thousand dollars, or so much thereof as may be necessary, 
to transport and settle said slaves to and in some other State 
or Territory of the United States, giving to all above the age 
of forty not less than ten acres of land each." 

No man ever more thoroughly understood the 
interest, or more filially studied the heart of Vir- 
ginia, than John Randolph. The words I have 
read will one day be embodied in a statute of the 
State. 

Washington had led the way in this mode of 
deliverance, manumitting all his slaves by will; 
and this was in pursuance of what long before he 
said the interests of Maryland and Virginia de- 
manded. In his letter to Sir John Sinclair, in 
reference to these States, he said: " Gradual ab- 
olition," "nothing is more certain, they must 
have, and at a period not remote." It seems, 
however, from au earlier letter to La Fayette, that 
he contemplated , with peculiar pleasure, the idea of 
their enfranchisement. He says to the Marquis: 
" Your late purchase of an estate in Cayenne, with a view 
of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble 
proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit might 
dift'use itself generally into the nands of the people of this 
country !" 

He did not expect this at once, for he adds: 
" To set the slaves afloat at once, would, I really believe, 
be productive of much inconvenience and miscliief; but by 
degrees it might, and assuredly ought, to be eflected, and 
that by legislation." 

The legislation resulted differently, as is shown 
in the closing passage of Mr. Jefferson's will, in 
relation to the slaves, which his incumbered 
estate enabled him to dispose of. It is in these 
words: 

" I give them their freedom, and earnestly request of the 
Legislature of Virginia a eonfnination of the bequest of 
freedom to these servants, with permission to remain in this 
State, where their families and connections are, as an addi- 
tional instance of the favor of which I have received so 
many manifestations in ray life, and for which I now give 
them my last solemn and dutiful thanks." 

The " gradual abolition " contemplated by 



Washington had, before Mr. Jefferson's death, 
made so large a class of free negroes as to endan- 
ger the safety of the white race by inciting for- 
midable insurrections among the slaves, besides 
producing the lesser inconveniences apprehended . 
Hence the law prohibiting manumission without 
the removal of the emancipated slaves from the 
State. Mr. Randolph's love for his own State 
was so great that he set an example of an exodus 
by sending his tribe of freed blacks beyond the 
confines of Virginia, at the cost of much mischief 
to another State. By the legislation of many free 
States the intrusion of such emigration was soon 
prevented; and it may now be asserted with truth, 
that the laws of the free and the slave States com- 
bine to perpetuate slavery ! for where is the freed 
man to go .' A few rich masters provide the means 
to return their bondsmen to Africa; and recently 
some small parties embarked to Mexico, to throw 
themselves upon the humanity of its semi-bar- 
barous people. There is no alternative but to 
submit to expulsion, or to refuse the boon of free- 
dom. There existed at least a half million man- 
umitted slaves before the prescriptive laws were 
passed at the North or South. In the latter sec- 
tion, where the intercourse of the enfranchised 
and enslaved of the same race is pregnant with 
danger, measures are in progress to reduce all to 
the condition of slavery. Laws have been passed 
in some of the slave States providing that the freed 
may subject themselves again to servitude, if they 
can find a master. During the summer and fall 
another step was taken in this direction by large 
meetings in Virginia, praying the Legislature to 
authorize a sweeping sale of all free blacks by 
auction — to reduce the entire race within the State, 
however slightly tinctured with negro blood, to 
bondage. 

Mr. Chairman, there is nothing in the compar- 
ative progress of the slave and free States, since 
the illustrious patriotsof Virginia, in the last and 
most solemn act of their lives, bore their testi- 
mony against the institution which now convulses 
the Confederacy, tending to condemn their policy. 
There is much in the aspect now given to our af- 
fairs by that fatal element, against which their 
forecast gave warning, to prove that their solici- 
tude to remove it had its root in that sound judg- 
mentand devoted love to the country, which made 
the strongest features of their characters. One 
great difficulty obstructed these efforts. Eman- 
cipation was easy, but the amalgamation of the 
white and black races was abhorrent, and their 
existence as equals, under the same Government, 
was for that reason impossible. They were, nev- 
ertheless, resolved to make the experiment of the 



J^ 



6 



gradual abolition of slavery, hoping that time 
would make some outlet to the degraded caste. I 
believe the existing circumstances on this con- 
tinent now justify that hope. The attempt of 
African colonization, to relieve us of the load, has 
failed. The immense distance, and the barbarous 
state of the toother country, to which we would 
restore its improvec^race that has arisen among 
us, has paralyzed all the efforts of the benevolent 
society that has labored so long in vain to form a 
community in Liberia which would draw hence 
its kindred emancipated pojiulation, and establish 
a nation there to spread civilization and religion 
over Africa. Time has shown that the causes 
which have produced races, never to improve 
Africa, or to be improved there, but to abandon it 
and give their vigor and derive their advancement 
in other climes, are not to be reversed by the best 
efforts of the best of men. " Westward the star 
of empire takes its way," is a prophecy which 
v.'ill find its accomplishment within the tropics as 
well as outside of them on this continent. Lib- 
erty and security promote enterprise and industry, 
and so create that intelligence which brings in its 
train civilization and Cnristianity. Africa is a 
desert, in which every effort to propagate the ele- 
ments which lead to such results have proved fail- 
ures; and forages Africa has ever been " thehousc 
of bondage." 

As Americans, it is our first interest to take 
care of this continent, and provide for the races 
on whose ficulties and labor its advancement 
dcpeVids. In my opinion, the door is now open 
in Central America to receive the enfranchised 
colored race born amongst us, and which has 
received, with our language and the habits con- 
tracted under our institutions, much that adapts 
it to sustain apart in giving stability to the insti- 
tutions copied from ours in the Central American 
Republics. 

Mr. Wells, an American gentleman of high 
talents and attainments, with a view to jn-omoto 
commercial enterprises originating with a mer- 
chant of New York, recently traversed Central 
America under most favorable auspicies, in order 
to explore its resources and obtain certain mining 
and commercial privileges from the Government 
of Honduras. His volume, published at the close 
of the year 185G, and which gives the condition 
of the country down to the end of Walker's first 
invasion, is full of information as to the capabil- 
ities of the country, and the posture of the parties 
that distract it. Itshows on what the Liberals, who 
emancipated the country from Spain, rely for the 
preservation of its freedom. He was intimate with 
Cabanas, the late cnliglitencd and most liberal 



President of Honduras, whose policy he indicates 
in the brief passages I now read from his book: 

"Although as a Spanish American, Cabanas was person- 
ally opposed, atthe commencement of his administration, to 
the encouiapoment of enterprises through which stranger.-* 
would be likely to obtain a dangerous ascendency inCentrai 
America, he was gradually induced, by the influence of 
Seiiors Cacho and Mejiu, his Ministers, to dismiss these ob- 
jections. In the midst of his harassing campaign in Gra- 
cias,in the month of July, he found time to tnmhis attention 
toward the interoceanic railway project ; and to Cabanas 
should be ascribed the double honor ofconqucringhis inborn 
prejudices against foreigners, and of giving the principal 
impulse to .an enterprise likely to assume an importance 
second to none in the present age. 

'• Actuated by the same laudable intentions, and pene- 
trated with the conviction that only through northern in- 
dustry and enterprise can the .Spanish-American races be 
raised to a permanent grade of prosperity, Sciior Barrun- 
dia, then far advanced in years, and frequently referred to 
in this sketch, as a talented and zealous member of the 
Liberal party, was dispatched to Washington as the first 
diplomatic agent ever sent to the United States by Hondu- 
ras, as a distinct Power. His death at New York, on the 
6th of August, of the same year, put an untimely end to the 
negotiations, and frustrated the dawning hopes of the Lib- 
erals." 

The precise object aimed at in the negotiation 
proposed to our President, is made conspicuous 
in the address of the Minister Earrundia, one of 
the great and learned men of the country, the last 
of its revolutionary stock, whose eloquence and 
wisdom in its councils led the way to the achieve- 
ment of its independence. His presentation speech 
uttered the sentiments of the President of Hon- 
duras, as well as those of the venerable patriot 
and statesman and all the liberals he led, who 
founded that Republic on the basis of our North 
American Confederacy. Every word of it is 
pregnant with political meaning to which time will 
give effect; and the House cannot fail to mark 
these sentences in the address, and give emphasis 
to the closing words: 

" The mission with which I am charged is perliaps more 
significant than any which has yet originated in Central 
America, and its objects arc -such as are seldom confided 
to an ordinary legation. It relates to the vital interests of 
an .'Vmerican people struggling against the antagonism of 
monarchical principles, which, unfortunately, in some parts 
of this continent are seeking to change the blessings of lib- 
erty and independence/or aHcii^ro/ectoraJesan'i irrcspotis- 
iblc diclntorshijTs." 

In a little more than a year afterwards the last 
words became facts. Carrera, a mestizo, of mixed 
Spanish and Indian blood, had, years before, by 
the aid of his Indian allies, made himself Dictator 
of Guatemala; then turning his force against 
Cabaiius, President of Honduras and chief of 
the Liberals, he placed Santos Guardiola, another 
mestizo, in a dictatorship over that State. It is 
with this latter (Aieftain that the British Govern- 



ment has negotiated its treaty, resigning the Bay- 
Islands to the so-called Republic, but still hold- 
ing them under the " alien protectorate" of Brit- 
ish institutions. I will read a single page from 
the lucid sketch given by Mr. Wells's book, 
which is, in fact, his report to the American mer- 
cliants who employed him to examine the state of 
tJie country, in which they designed to prosecute 
their commercial enterprises. In this passage 
he makes an epitome which grasps the whole 
history: 

" It will be seen that the main cause of the devastating 
wars of Central America, lias been the division of the 
States into irreconcilable parties; one advocating the con- 
tinuance of the obsolete forms of the Spanish viceroyalty, 
and the revival of the extinct aristocratical institutions of 
the colonial period ; and the other, emulous of the astonish- 
ing progress of the United States under a purely republican 
government, vainly attempting to establish a similar system, 
and shedding their best blood in the Uiirty years' struggle 
to that end. 

'■ Of the patriotic motives of the Liberals, scarcely one 
among the few native and foreign writers upon the politics 
of Central America but pay a deserved tribute to their earn- 
est exertions in behalf of their country. An English author 
includes in the Liberal party some few who had been distin- 
guished men under the monarchy, the greater portions of the 
legal and medical professions, or, in other words, the ilite of 
the University, who had preferred these studies to that of 
theology or canons, not so much as a means of support as 
b-ecause th©y are almost the only careers open to those who 
reject the ecclesiastical vocation. ' It also numbered many 
merchants and landed proprietors, supported by a numerous 
body, composed of the more intelligent, artisans and labor- 
ers. Their leaders were men of very decided democratical 
principles, of unquestionable ability, and, considering the 
school they were brought up in and the influence that sur- 
rounded them, they manifested no small amount of true 
patriotism and devotedness to their convictions ; though, 
alas I in too many instances, stained with venality and even 
with deeds of oppression and blood. What they overthrew, 
and what they accomplished for the State is honorable alike 
to their talents and their sentiments; and though the limits 
of a sketch v/ill scarcely admit a due appreciation of it, a 
cursory view of their achievemcats, taking into considera- 
tion the circumstances of the people, and of the times, will 
probably excite more wonder, and certainly merits higher 
praise, than the victories of Alvarado.' 

" Since Guardiola's usurpation of the supreme power in 
Honduras, the State has assumed a temporary importance 
abroad, by the arrangement of a treaty between its Govern- 
ment and that of Great Britain, by which the Central Amer- 
ican question was tinally settled, tlie Bay Islands restored 
to t,he Republic, and the British protectorate withdrawn 
from the Mosquito territory. The communication of Seiior 
Alvarado, Honduras's Minister to Great Britain, announcing 
to his Government the conclusion of the treaty, is dated 
London, September 15, 1856. The principal feature in the 
convention was the right accorded to the inhabitants of the 
Bay Islands to maintain their own municipal government, 
to be administered by legislative, executive, and judicial 
officers of their own election ; trial by jury in their own 
courts; freedom of religious belief and worship, public and 
private; exception from military service exceptfortheirowii 



defense; and from all taxation on real or other property be- 
yond such as may be imposed by their own municipality 
and collected for the treasury of the same, and to be ap- 
plied to the common benefit. 

" The stipulations concerning religious freedom and tria 
by jury are thus forced on Honduras, and furnish the germs 
from which these eminently Anglo-Saxon ideas must event- 
ually spread to the main land. Under the Federal Republic 
the attempt to introduce this gave rise to the sanguinary con- 
flicts between the authorities aud the Indians, who tlien, as 
now, were incapable of appreciating its benefits. The privi- 
leges thus accorded to an integral portion of the State afford 
the first instance of tlie establishment in Central America o 
republican institutions, which are not subject to overthrow 
at the caprice of temporary rulers." 

It seems that our American observer, standing 
on the spot — however averse to this British ob- 
trusion — is obliged to admit that it afforded " the 
fast inslance of the establishment in Central America 
of republican institutions which are not subject to 
overthrow at the caprice of temporary rulers." But 
what says our President in reference to this con- 
vention ? He revolts at it, because, (I read his 
words:) 

" Whilst declaring the Bay Islands to be a free territory 
under the sovereignty of Honduras, it deprived that Repub- 
lic of rights without which its sovereignty over them could 
scarcely be said to exist. It divided them from the remain- 
der of Honduras, and gave to their inhabitants a separate 
Government of their own, with legislative, executive, and 
judicial officers, elected by themselves. It deprived the 
Government of Honduras of the taxing power in every form 
and exempted the people of the islands from the perform- 
ance of military duty, except for tlicir own exclusive de- 
I fense. It also prohibited tliat Republic from erecting forti- 
fications upon them for their protection ; thus leaving them 
open to invasion from every quarter ; and, finally, it pro- 
vided ' that slavery shall not at any time hereafter be pei-- 
mitted to exist therein.' " 

This last point is marked by inverted commas 
in the message, by way of showing that he gives 
the exact words of the treaty in that clause, v/hich 
crowns the climax of its obnoxious impositions. 
It is strange that our President in his enumera- 
tion of the shocking guarantees with which Eng- 
land incumbered her surrender of the Bay Islands 
to the mercy of the dictator, omitted those v/hich 
were closely associated with, and gave vitality to 
that interdicting slavery. They were the right of 
habeas corpus, trial by jury, and freedom of religious 
belief and worship. 

But Mr. Buchanan put his mark on that line of 
the treaty which excited so inuch abhorrence in 
that part of the Senate, which was, and is still 
laboring to force slavery on Kansas. He " stick.s 
a pin there" and thus tells them, " I join you in 
making war upon the establishment of Anglo- 
Saxon institutions in any part of Central America, 
coupled with the exclusion of slavery, because 
they will frustrate the design we have formed and 



8 



sent Walker to execute," and which the latter 
plainly avows in the following passage of a letter 
to one of his emissaries embarked with him in the 
enterprise. In his letter to Goicuria, sent by him 
as minister to England, he says: 

" With your versatility, and, if I may use the term, adapt- 
ability, I expect mucli to be done in England. You can do 
more than any American could possibly accomplish, be- 
cause you can make llie British Cabinet see that we arc not 
engaged in any scheme for annexation; you can make them 
see that the only way to cut the expanding and expansive 
democracy of the North, is by a powerful and compact south- 
ern federation baied on military principles." 

Agam he says: 

" Tell he must send mo the news, and let me know 

whether ' Cuba must and shall be free' but not for the 
Yankees, Oh ! no ! that fine country is not fit for those bar- 
barous Yankees ! What would such a psalm-singing set 
do in the island. -'" 

In his letter to the Hon. C. J. Jenkins, of 
Georgia, Walker admits that though he did not 
go to Central America to establish slavery, that 
measure was the guiding star of his policy after 
he reached there. He admite, too, that the decree 
issued with this object in view, was his individ- 
ual act, and that it was opposed by the whole 
body of native inhabitants. He asserts, also, that 
the measure was resorted to by him as part of a 
system for promoting "the increase of negro sla- 
very on this continent." 

Now, whether the President sent his fleet to 
Nicaragua to protect that State from Walker's 
attempt, in compliance with the late treaty, or to 
make a cover for our national honor, and a cover 
for the enterprise endangered by another fleet hover- 
ing on that coast, remains a problem. In one view, 
the policy contemplated by him is very clear. No 
man can look at the complexion of the Cabinet 
with which he is surrounded; at the hardy at- 
tempts of every branch of the Government to 
propagate slavery North and South; at the mani- 
fest determination, both of the Senate and the late 
and the present President, to keep open the Cen- 
tral American dispute with the British Govern- 
ment, making its treaty with Honduras for the 
exclusion of slavery from the Bay Islands the 
main difficulty, without seeing that there is a 
latent purpose of forcing slavery on that region 
against the will of a majority of the people of the 
Union, and making the Confederacy submit to a 
fragment of it, under the threat of flying oflT. 

The purpose of subjecting Central America to 
slavery has been boldly proclaimed; and the open- 
ing of the African slave trade is relied upon to fill 
up the void in the laboring population which must 
be made by the war and the expulsion of danger- 
ous classes. Is it not a dcirradation of the nation 



which stands on this continent as the first asaerter 
of its freedom and independence, and the great 
exemplar of popular sovereignty in the world, to 
have a Chief Magistrate and controlling councils 
harboring designs v/hich they dare not avow, and 
seeking by sly intrigues to involve it in a war, to 
accomplish schemes which the people would spurn 
with disgust, if promulgated before they became 
committed in the conflict? I have no doubt my 
countrymen would regard with just indignation, 
and resist an attempt by England to turn our flank 
on the Gulf of Mexico. That she spreads her 
dominion across this continent, from the Gulf of 
the St. Lawrence to Vancouver's Island on the 
Pacific, bringing its pressure to bear upon our 
whole northern frontier, is as much constraint as 
can be endured. The nation would be willing to 
close this century as it began — in hostility with 
England — rather than submit to encroachment in 
our southern quarter. For this reason our Govern- 
ment insisted that Great Britain should abandon 
the assumed protectorate claimed over the coasts 
of Central America. She relinquished it; but she 
stipulated with Honduras that the subjects left by 
her in the Bay Islands should continue to enjoy 
the free institutions which she had planted there. 
Our own citizen , Mr. Wells, looking to the estab- 
lishment of our influence through ourinstituliona 
in this quarter, hails this step as " the establishment 
in Central America of republican institutions, which 
are not to be ovcrdirown at the caprice of teniporaiy 
rulers. " 

Can Mr. Buchanan summon hardihood to in- 
volve this country in a war to expel the freedoni 
guarantied to the Bay Islands by the treaty made 
with the dictator Guardiola, and subject them to 
his absolute authority.' I would rather hope that 
our Government, if not now, may yet, under an- 
other Presidency, extend its influence over the 
mainland of Central America, by giving its sup- 
port to maintain Governments there based upon 
its own republican principles. To do this, we 
must, like England in the case of the Bay Islands, 
send our people into the country, protect our mer- 
chants in their enterprises there, and make an honest 
demonstration of the fixed purpose of our Government 
to build up the prosperity of Central America for its 
own and our advantage. Wluit could confer more 
honor on our national character tlian the accept- 
ance of the proposal which the illustrious patriot 
Barrundia, as the last act of his life, submitted to 
our late President, speaking for Cabanas and the 
wishes (as Mr. Wells and our diplomatic agent, 
Mr. Squicr, give reason to believe) of the people 
of Honduras. Barrundia says: 

"She Oder? lirroommo<Iiousimrts, her salubrious climate. 



9 



and lier great but undeveloped resources, to the aid of this 
undertaking, and freely olFers her rich and fertile country to 
tlie enterprise and industry of the American people. Hon- 
duras should be forever the friend and sister of the United 
States, and she looks hopefully to the latter for the support 
of her liberty and independence. May the eternal Disposer 
of events link together the people of both by the unalterable 
tie of interest and future mutual prosperity." 

He concludes by repeating: 

" The earnest solicitude of Honduras to establish a true 
and intimate fraternity with the United States, in such form 
that both nations may have a single interest for the common 
cause of liberty, and in such manner that Honduras may 
proceed to develop her latent elements of prosperity, and to 
improve the advantages of a position eminently favored by 
nature, without a fear of disturbance for the future, cither 
Jroin civil discord or exterior aggression, should such a for- 
tunate result be attained, Honduras will yet present, in the 
center of the commercial world, the glorious spectacle of a 
free and prosperous people sustained by the generosity of the 
great American Repichlic." 

To what a glorious and benevolent mission was 
our country called by this invocation of Barrun- 
dia, compared with those vile buccaneering expe- 
ditions set on foot by a body of fillibustering mal- 
contents among us, enemies alike of both Repub- 
lics ! They want to set up a government " under 
military ride." They want to be associated with 
the slave States, and exclude " the psalm-singing 
Yankees." They want to repeal the edict eman- 
cipating the slaves in the Central American States 
and enslave them again. Andean anyone doubt 
whether these rapacious propagandists of slavery 
would hesitate, in case of success, to make them- 
selves amends for their toils, sufferings, and 
dangers, somewhat as Cortez turned these con- 
quests to account, acquired and held " by mili- 
tary rule.'" 

Connected with this overture of Barrundia, on 
the part of Honduras, freely offering " her rich 
and fertile country (rich in gold and every spe- 
cies of vegetation) to the enterprise and industry 
of the American people," in return for security 
from " civil discord and foreign aggression," was 
another which addressed itself to the enterprising 
spirit of our great commercial cities. It was the 
grant of a charter conferring privileges of im- 
mense value to be derived from the construction 
of an inter-oceanic railroad from the Atlantic bay 
of Honduras to the bay of Fonseca, on the Pa- 
cific. Mr. Wells glances at this when he arrives 
at Amapala, which he mentions as the projected 
" terminus of the Honduras inter-oceanic rail- 
road, which, commencing on the Caribbean sea, is 
designed to pass through the beautiful valley of 
Comagua, a distance of one hundred and sixty- 
eight miles, and with an average grade, as the re- 
ports of the surveys of Mr. E. G. Squier state, 



of only twenty-eight feet to the mile. " He con- 
tinues: 

" While Panama and Nicaragua were early made the field 
of American enterprise for the establishment of an inter- 
oceanic communication, it is a little singular that speedier 
attention was not directed to this route to the Pacific, which 
is shorter than any other, not excepting that of Tehuante- 
pec, and offers facilities for the construction of an inter- 
oceanic railroad, not exceeded by any other." 

He adds: 

" Extraordinary inducements are offered for the further- 
ing of this great enterprise ; one of the principal of which 
is the existence of safe and capacious harbors at either ter- 
minus, (an advantage not possessed by the Tebuantepec 
route,) and the comparative small amount of grading and 
bridging to be done." 

In the following paragraph he describes the site 
of the intended terminus on the Pacific side: 

" The first impression on landing at Tigre Island (in the 
bay on the Pacific side) is its splendid facilities for fortifica- 
tion, and the formation of a great central commercial depot 
from which to command the trade of the three States bor- 
dering on the bay of Fonseca. Its resources fully devel- 
oped, Amapala nnglit be made the most important port on 
the Pacific coast, south of San Francisco. In 1850, Mr. E. 
G. Squier, during bis charg^ship, forwarded a series of dis- 
patches to the United States Government, in which he ad- 
vocated the advantages of entering into negotiations with 
Honduras for the establishment of a naval station at Ama- 
pala. Should this plan be adopted, the yearly increasing 
means of coninuinicaiion between California and the eastern 
States would soon place a United States squadron within 
seven days of Washington ; with the construction of the 
contemplated Honduras railroad, and the appliances of tel- 
egraphs and steamers, Government orders of the most vital 
importance to the nation could reach our squadron in the 
Pacific in three and a half days. The town is now the prin- 
cipal, or rather the only real port where large vessels or 
steamers may anchor and discharge, on the Pacific coast of 
the three Republics of Honduras, San Salvador, or Nicara- 
gua." 

Our Presidents, of late years, have not been able 
to lift their vision to look beyond a President-nom- 
inating convention. Without having rendered 
service of any sort to recommend them to the favor 
of the nation, these conventional aspirants rely on 
their location in the North, the skill in party tac- 
tics acquired by them as subalterns at the drill, 
and the cunning acquired in the intrigues neces- 
sary to give prominence to an eager ambition, 
without the higher faculties to promote it, fitted 
these men to become the instruments of a section 
to defeat the sound, settled policy of the nation. 
Fillmore was too busy in making covert compli- 
ances to ingratiate himself with those pressing 
from the South to extend the area of slavery North 
and West, to listen to our Charge in Central Amer- 
ica, when urging the expansion of our national 
greatness in a direction to have its just control 
over the continent and the oceans that washed its 
shores. Pierce was so sunk in his submission to 



10 



the plotters laboring to crush Kansas vinder sla- 
very, that the overtures of Barrundia, which would 
have lifted av/hole galaxy of independent Slates, 
with open bosom to welcome the enterprise and 
industry of our countrymen and the influence of 
our Government, were unheeded. The voice of 
an empire, uttered by its noblest patriot and states- 
man, its eloquent philosopher, the scholar who 
modeled its Government after our own, fell upon 
his ear as " upon the dull, cold ear of death." 
But" theday of small things," of enslaved Pres- 
idents, of buccaneers, will pass away, and the 
nation of the New World will resume the attitude 
which the moral grandeur of the great man who 
directed its affairs for the first half century, gave it. 
Then the time will come for a new movement on 
this continent, which will confer prosperity on 
these races of men. 

Mr. Chairman, it is evident to every man of 
thought that the freed blacks hold a place in this 
country which cannot be maintained. Those who 
have fled to the North are most unwelcome vis- 
itors. The strong repugnance of the free white 
laborer to be yoked with the negro refugee breeds 
an enmity between races, which must end in the 
expulsion of the latter. Centuries could not rec- 
oncile the Spaniards to the Moors, and although 
the latter were the most useful people in Spain, 
their expulsion was the only way to peace. In 
spite of all that reason or religion can urge, na- 
ture has put a badge upon the African, making 
amalgamation revolting to our race. Centuries 
have shown that even the aboriginal race of this 
continent, although approaching our species in 
every respect more nearly, perish from contiguity 
with the white man. But I will not argue the 
point. The law of the North has put its ban upon 
immigration of negroes into the free States. 

In the South, causes more potent still make it 
impossible that the emancipated blacks can re- 
main there. The multiplication of slaves and freed 
men of the same caste in the section where the 
dominant race must become proportionally fewer 
from emigration, has already compelled the latter 
to prohibit emancipation within the Slates, and 
to seek means of deliverance from the free blacks. 
The northern States will not receive them; the 
soulhern Slates dare not retain them. What is to 
be done? What was done with the native popu- 
lation which it was found incompatible with the 
interests of Georgia and the Slates southwest 
of the Ohio, and the States northwest, to indulge 
with homes wilhin their limits.' The United 
Slates held it to be a national duty to purchase 
their lands from ihem, acquire homes for them 
in other regions, and to hold out inducements tuid 



provide the means for their removal to them. 
Have not the negroes, born on our soil, who have 
grown up among us, and although fated to be a 
burden and obstruction to our progress — yet al- 
ways in amity and laboring to render service — 
equal claims upon us with the savages, against 
whom we have had to fight our way for centuries, 
resisting all attempts to bring them within the i:)ale 
of civilization ? 

The President, in his late message, proposes 
to gather these savages in colonies, and at an early 
day raise them to the dignity of forming States, 
and assuming equality with the States of the 
Union. The Africans, bred and educated within 
civilized communities, who speak our language, 
are listeners at our canvasses, lookers-on at the 
elections, worshipers in our churches, and con- 
stantly witness the processes of improvement in 
our society, in the field, the work-shop, and every 
domestic scene — one would think quite as capable 
of being disciplined in colonics, and fitted to take 
partin the Government of the Union as the Shaw- 
nees, Pottawatomies, Winnebagoes, the Sacs and 
Foxes, removed from the northwest; or the Chero- 
kees, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles from the 
southwest; as far as respects the Sioux, Paw- 
nees, Cheyennes, Utahs, Camanches,and Black- 
feet, the President might have spared his recom- 
mendation until they were caught. I believe the 
people who constitute this Confederacy will for- 
ever scout the idea of blending either Indian or 
negro Slates with it. The aboriginal or imported 
tribes which cannot amalgamate with our race, 
can never share in its Government in equal sov- 
ereignties. In the benevolent design of colonizing 
the Indians, protecting and aiding their efforts to 
gain a subsistence by cultivating the soil set apart 
for them, I most cordially concur; but I think, 
whatever form of society they may assume, they 
must always be held as dependencies; not put 
upon the footing of equality with the Stales. 

And ought not the Government to be equally 
provident for such portions of the unfortunate 
race born to slavery, but who, having attained 
freedom, find that it renders them a burden to 
those among whom they live — a burden that will 
not be borne.' This is the question which abso- 
lute necessity now forces oh the consideration of 
the country — one deeply affecting the interests 
and feelings of slaveholders and non-slaveholders 
of the superior race, and of more than half a mil- 
lion already manumitted inferiors pressed down 
by their weight. 

The apparent evil which now produces so much 
anxiety and agitation here, I feel a firm convic- 
tion wise counsels will overrule for good. I 



11 



believe that the removal from among us of such 
of the freed people of color as might be induced 
willingly to go to such pans of Central America 
as our Government could open up to them and 
establish as a secure home, would be fraught 
with benefits to us, to the emigrants, to the people 
receiving them, and to all concerned in the com- 
merce of this continent within the tropics. I have 
already quoted the account of a late visitor and 
most acute observer, sent to report on the condi- 
tion of that country. He confirms the general 
impression in regard to the effete state of the Span- 
ish race in Honduras and the other Central Amer- 
ican States; the insurrectionary disposition of 
the Indians and mestizos of mixed Indian and 
Spanish blood, which produces incessant civil 
war and revolution; and he shows that the African 
race constitutes the basis on which some ener- 
getic and intelligent Power must build a stable 
structure of free government. The negroes and 
mulattoes in Honduras number one hundred and 
forty thousand; the Indians one hundred thou- 
sand; the whites about fifty thousand; but of this 
caste he remarks, that — 

<•' Indiscrirainiite amalgamation has nearly obliterated the 
former distinction of caste, and few families of pure Spanish 
descent are known. Some of the wealthiest inercliants of i 
Die department of Tegucigalpa are blacks, possessing a sur- i 
prising degree of business tact. Two of the largest com- 
mercial houses have negro proprietors, whose mercantile 
relations extend to Europe, whence they import most of 
their goods. Tiiough the great majority of the negroes of 
Honduras are a thoroughly debasfid and ignorant class, there 
are numerous exceptions. The Senate and Assembly have 
contained many highly intelligent blacks and mulattoes, 
tlioroughly educated in the Central American school of 
politics, and Willi suificient discernment to foresee the de- 
cline of their own influence, and the power of the negro 
race, with the introduction of the Teutonic stock. Hence 
their violent opi)Osition to foreign enterprises, in the national 
councils and in their private circles. The clergy are mostly 
negroes or mestizos. Their power for evil has been largely 
contracted since the independence ; but, with a few excep- 
tions, those men exercise rather a favorable influence over 
the people, and are generally respected." 

Mr. Chairman, it is to this country, rich in 
mines, in every tropical production, and open to 
our emigrants and to our commerce through two 
great bays, one on the Pacific and the other on 
the Atlantic, and Avithin three days' steaming of 
oar own coast, that I would propose to form a set- 
tlement for such of our colored ra'ce now free, or 
that may hereafter be freed, as might volunteer to 
establish it under the auspices of our Government. 
And touching this most important policy, as cal- 
culated to deliver our Republic from the incubus 
which threatens so much mischief, and to convert 
it into a means of so much good, I beg leave to 
take a lesson from the colonial policy of Great 



Britain, which received as a system its finished 
and most liberal form under the late administra- 
tion of Lord John Russell — Earl Grey presiding 
over the offiLce of Secretary of State for the Colo- 
nial Department. The whole system is developed 
in a masterly series of letters addressed by the 
Earl to the Premier, which, with the history of 
the colonization that has girdled the world with 
Great Britain's dependencies, gives the reforms 
that make them adhere to the empire without 
force and from a sense of mutual advantage 
embraced in a common power and glory. The 
particular circumstance in that policy to which I 
would point the eye, is one which has uniformly 
characterized it: the transplantation of a bcttcrr in- 
formed people, imbued with the traits they wished 
to impress on the race they sought to subject to 
their influence. The example I adduce, as appli- 
cable to the scheme I would recommend, is in 
Earl Grey's letter on Trinidad. Speaking of the 
various transplantations made for the improve- 
ment of Trinidad, he says: 

" Steps have also been taken, udthinilie last two years, for 
■procuring immigrants of afar more valuahlc description than 
those from India. I refer to the free Hack and colored inhab- 
itants of the United States. These people are regarded as an 
incumbrance, and their presence is considered a most serious 
evil in the States which they now inhabit, while there can be 
no doubt that many of them would be the best possible settlers 
who could be introduced into Trinidad. Speaking the English, 
with habits of industry and of civilized life, and well adapted 
by their constitution to the climate, there seems to be no rea- 
son to douht the success of black arid colored immigrants from 
the United States. Provided a proper selection is made of 
the individuals to be brought, their introduction could not fail 
to be of the highest value to the colony, not only from the act- 
ual accession of Us population, which would be thus obtained, 
but from the example which they would afford to its present 
inhabitants. Such an addition to the existing population of 
Trinidad would have a tendency to raise the whole commu- 
nity in the scale of civilization; whereas, there is precisely 
the opposite tendency with respect to immigration from almost 
any other qumrter, and this is no slight drawback to the adr- 
vantage to be obtained from it;" (that is, from the immigra- 
tion from India.) 

Now this element of strength and improvement 
which English policy would allure to its West 
India possessions, I would allure to some conge- 
nial region on our own continent, with a view to 
their welfare, and to the extension of the influ- 
ence and the commerce of their native country, 
the United States. 1 propose for imitation the 
example of the groat pioneer nation in coloniza- 
tion. It has exhibited the elastic power of pop- 
ular representative self-government, by which it 
has stretched Great Britain— though a mere sel- 
vage of the continent of Europe, saved from the 
o-rasp of its despots by a channel of the sea — 
around the world; erecting an empire greater than 



12 



the Roman by the art of making and managing 
dependenciea. Conquest over barbarous tribes 
by naval and military force, ■wa.s the first step in 
this great career. But when these tribes became 
nations, instructed in the arts of civilization and 
skilled in the use of arms — a progress urged on 
as necessary to the commerce, aggrandizement, 
and defense of England — they would no longer 
be held subjected by force, and the whole system 
has been changed gradually into that which is in 
reality a confederacy, with Great Britain for its 
head, and hercrown the symbol, drawing together 
the united powers of the whole. Earl Grey de- 
scribes the principle of this great revolution as 
follows: 

" Keeping steadily in view that tlie welfare and civiliza- 
tion of the inhabitants of the colonies and tlie advantage 
which the empire at lar<;e may derive from their prosperity, 
are the only objects for which the extension of these de- 
pendencies is desirable, and believing also that there can be 
no doubt as to the superiority of free governments, to those 
of an opposite character, as instruments of promoting tlie 
advancement of communities, in which they can be made to 
work with success, I consider it to be the obvious duty and 
interest of this country to extend representative institutions 
to every one of its dependencies, where they have not been 
established, and where this can be done with safety." 

The late rebellion in Canada was the immediate 
cause of putting the colonies upon the footing of 
the mother country in the freedom of its institu- 
tions. The American Revolution had taught a 
lesson that was not lost. Lord Grey says: 

" The system now established in Canada is that of parlia- 
mentary government; that is to say, government by means 
of parties. This form of government is now working well 
in that and the neighboring provinces, and is probably, on 
the whole, the best plan hitherto adopted of enabling a 
colony in an advanced stage of its social progress, to exer- 
cise the privilege of self government. It may therefore be 
regarded as the form wliieli representative institutions, when 
they acquire their full development, are likely to take in 
the British Colonies. 

In pursuance of this plan, when Lord Elgin 
was sent to Canada to give it practical effect, his 
instructions bore on their face the unqualified de- 
claration, that " it cannot be too dislinctly acknoxol- 
edgcd that it is neither possible nor desirable to carry 
on the government of any of the British provinces in 
J^orth America in opposition to the opinion of the in- 
habitants.^' This was a declaration of independ- 
ence by the Government in advance of that con- 
templated by the people, and the consequence 
was that the Reformers came into power in the 
Canadas, and instead of persisting in the idea of 
annexation to the United States, they have be- 
come our rivals in progress, and hold their asso- 
ciation with the renown and power of England as 
conferring advantages over us, from whom they 



are content to ask only a fair field for competition 
on this continent in a reciprocity treaty. 

This scheme of securing the allegiance of the 
nations Great Britain has in her train, by impart- 
ing to them the benefit of the free institutions she 
enjoys, has been carried out, in a greater or less, 
degree, all over the world. In the West Indies, 
in defiance of the violent opposition of island aris- 
tocracies, (the lords of the soil,) the Government 
consulted the greatest good of the greatest num- 
ber, and set free all the slaves; and, what was 
held to be equally disastrous, it struck off the fet- 
ters of monopoly, which, by means of differential 
duties, gave the home market to the sugar-planters 
without competition. This double act of eman- 
cipation, tripled by the repeal of the navigation 
act, raised the cry of the privileged owners every- 
where, that ruin was inevitable. Lord Grey shows 
the result in figures from the custom-house; and 
it appears that, both in the West Indies and East 
Indies, comparing five years before with five years 
after the act of freedom, the increase of the sugar 
crops alone, in the last five years, under free labor 
and free competition, was 635,869 cwts. Mr. 
D 'Israeli, who had been a Tory croaker against 
these reforms, afterwards, in a speech in Parlia- 
ment, made the amende to Lord John Russell, who 
was their author. After comparing results in de- 
tail, he lumps the matter, and says: 

" In other words, British production has increased by 
1,250,000 cwts., and foreign production (that is, slave grown 
sugar) has decreased by abojit 600,000 cwts. I may be called 
a traitor, I may be called a renegade; but I want to know 
whether there is any gentleman in this House, wherever he 
may sit, who would recommend a differential duty to prop 
up a prostrate industry which is already commanding the 
metropolitan market." 

The same system of assimilating the provincial 
institutions to the British has been pursued in the 
cannibal island of New Zealand, and brought to 
bear successfully on that warlike and powerful 
race, said to be superior to our Shawnecs, in bra- 
very and intelligence. They have been trained 
into stone masons, road builders, farmers, and 
traders, municipal otHcers, and legislators, by the 
elective and representative rights conceded to 
them under the instruction and assistance of the 
English authority. 

In Australia, once the land of convicts, the ex- 
periment works well. There parliamentary tactics 
are plied, and we hear of debates ending in the 
expulsion of a ministry who fail to meet the public 
expectation. It is now a land of gold, of herds, 
of agriculture, of commerce, of busy cities filled 
with refinement. Earl Grey tells us that in 1850 
a census wa.<< taken of one element of this pros- 
perity: " Ofpersons who had originally been pris- 



13 



oners, who were actually in the enjoyment either 
of entire freedom or that degree of freedom con- 
ferred by conditional pardon — the result of the 
investigation was to show that of such persons in 
these colonics there could not have been less than 
forty-eight thousand; and out of this large num- 
ber, those who were not, in some way or other, 
maintaining themselves honestly, either by their 
labor or the property they had acquired, were 
so few that they formed a mere fraction of the 
whole." 

The Secretary goes on to account for this by 
ascribing it to the salutary effect of transplant- 
ation; to change of scene, of society and habits, 
removal from temptation, and being forced by 
necessity to labor where wages were tempting, 
in the field or in tending herds, and having the 
opportunity to form a new character among a new 
people. Another obvious cause of this reform- 
ation, well understood in this country, is found 
in the ease of acquiring homesteads in the crown 
lands of Australia. To promote this, regulations 
were adopted, as Earl Grey expresses it, " with 
a view of insuring the distribution of land to those 
by whom it was wanted;" " since," as he adds, 
" there is no such fatal obstacle to the progress 
of a colony as having a large' proportion of its 
lands engrossed by persons who make little use 
of the estates they acquired." This was effected 
by selling to settlers at the minimum price, and 
then providing that " the money received for the 
land may be so laid out that the bona fide settler 
may receive, in the increased value for occupation 
of the 1 And he buys, full compensation for the 
price he is required to pay for it;" and he adds 
that it is " an essential part of the policy which 
ought to be j)ursued with regard to the alienation 
of land , that the proceeds of the land sales should 
be always so applied as to give this advantage to 
the purchaser. " This is almost a homestead bill; 
for it gives back the price of the land, received in 
one hand, by paying it for the improvement of it 
with the other hand. 

I have drawn thus largely on Secretary Grey's 
explanation of the colonial policy of Lord John 
Russell's administration, to point the eye of our 
Government to the causes of that success which 
is now the wonder of the world. India alone gives 
trouble; and that, doubtless, is attributable to the 
fact, that it has always been in the hands of a 
monopolizing company, which has had the right, 
and exerted it, to exclude Englishmen and Eng- 
lish institutions according to its pleasure, out of 
the provinces, which have been kept for the com- 
pany's benefit, in the hands of pensioned Nabobs. 
Lord Palmerston has already given notice of a 



bill which probably will place India in the nation 'a 
keeping. 

The position which things are taking on the 
shores of Central America indicates a rivalry be- 
tween England and the United States, as to the 
Power which is to exert the command over that 
region; to people it, civilize it, give it peace; in a 
word, make it in some sort a dependency — the 
only mode of saving it from barbarism, and from 
becominga nuisance. The British Government has 
sent its subjects — free colored persons, Jamaica 
negroes — into the logwood and mahogany cuttings 
in Honduras, and into the Bay Islands, where she 
claimed a protectorate. She has restored the latter 
to the Government on the main land, stipulating 
that all the rights that make freemen of the people 
of England or in the United States shall be held 
under a sacred guarantee. Mr. Buchanan says in 
his late message, that this security taken for the 
people of the Bay Islands, is the establishment of 
" a State, at all times subject to British influence 
and control." And how would he prevent it? By 
stripping off the civil rights the people enjoy, and 
subjecting them to a dictator? He especially ob- 
jects to their having " legislative, executive, and 
judicial officers, elected by themselves; of being 
exempt from the taxing power in every form," 
against the consent of their representatives; " the 
performance of military service, except for their 
own exclusive defense;" but above all, he holds 
the provision " that slavery shall not at any time 
hereafter be permitted to exist therein," to be the 
most obnoxious. 

Now I do not believe that the people of the 
United States will allow Mr. Buchanan to wage 
a war against Great Britain to establish slavery 
in the Bay Islands, any more than they will al- 
low him to establish it in Kansas by force of arms. 
Nor will they countenance his hostility to free- 
dom of religious belief in the Bay Islands; nor 
to the elective franchise; nor trial by jury; nor 
the right of /tabeas corpus; nor of voting the taxes 
to be imposed on them, and providing exclusively 
for their own military defense. It is a scandal to 
the age that an American President objects to the 
guarantee of the American bill of rights, to secure 
the freedom of any people. 

Instead of opposing, I think we should follow 
the example of England, and carry to the main 
land of Central America such of our free colored 
population as may be willing to go, upon the in- 
vitation of the Liberal party in that country, and 
extend our guarantee of freedom over them and 
the whole section of country which our Govern- 
ment may acquire, by purchase, for their recep- 
tion. There is a necessity that some great civil- 



14 



ized power should step in, to restore order and 
industry, under the guarantee of free and stable in- 
stitutions. England tenders the security of her 
crown, and the best usages that have ever grown 
up under a crown. We should offer the support 
of our Constitution, and the earnest of prosperous 
freedom which it has assured to our northern 
Republic. Which they would choose, the south- 
ern Republics have already evinced, in the forms 
they have adopted; and the encroachments of our 
transatlantic brethren would never have been at- 
tempted, but for the departures manifested in late 
movements from the principles of the foundersn^lfc* 
our Government. While Great Britain has been 
breaking down slavery and monopoly in the West 
Indies, the hand that has been felt from this quar- 
ter was that of the fillibuster. Cuba was ready 
to fly to the embraces of the United States, when 
she was repelled by two successive lawless ex- 
peditions, unmistakably marked by the features 
of the buccaneers who ravaged that island of 
old. 

And what have been the concomitants of Gen- 
eral Walker's invasion.' A proclamation revok- 
ing the constitutional decree delivering the greatest 
mass of the people from slavcry;and the principle 
thus manifested was fitly illustrated by military 
executions, butcheries in the streets of the cities, 
and, lastly, by the conflagration of one of the 
oldest. These atrocities had the effect of uniting 
the people of these distracted States, at last, in 
one common object — the expulsion of the oppres- 
sor. Happily for the fame of our country, the 
renewal of this horrible enterprise has been thor- 
oughly rebuked by the patriotism, courage, and 
decision of Commodore Paulding. The name has 
acquired a new luster to emblazon that which it 
inherits from the Revolution. If the commo- 
dore's act had the sanction of the Administration 
in advance, or shall receive it now, some proof 
will be given that it is not altogether degenerate, 
and much will have been done to remove from us 
the aversion, the want of confidence in the justice 
of this Republic, and the fear that it countenances 
a design to fix a yoke on Central America, instead 
of rescuing it from usurpation — results to be 
hailed as tending to fit our Government for the 
relation it should hold towards the Republics of 
this continent. 

If, on the other hand, the Administration takes 
part with Walker and the fiiction in this country 
that support him, it will show to all the world 
that the scheme for the propagation of slavery by 
the sword, of which it has given strong indica- 
tions in Kansas, is extended to the whole regions 
of the South. Such a ischemo can ngvcr euccccd 



unless the principle avowed as the basis of it, by 
Walker, shall prevail. The Iriumpli of " mililary 
rule" over civil institutions in the slave States, 
and their separation from the free States, North 
and West, must be won as the first step to con- 
quest; and then, as the next step, the whole power 
of the free Republics on this side of the Atlantic, 
and the hostile feeling, if not the direct force of 
Europe, must be encountered. The connection 
of the Atchison-Kansas conspiracy with that of 
Walker's against Central America is visible in 
the instruments who put them in motion. The 
same men. North and South, encourage both. 
Funds were raised for them in the same quarters; 
and such men as Colonel Titus are seen to emerge 
at one time in Kansas, at another in Nicaragua. 
The masses of the people nor their elevated states- 
men, neither of the North nor South, of the East 
or West, not even the great body of the slave- 
owners, have any heart in the propagation of 
slavery. Apart from the politicians who use the 
question for their own advancement, the design 
has no support but in the enemies of the Union, 
who hale free government from the bitterness of 
their hearts, or from a vanity they would dignify 
as aristocratic pride. 

In my opinion, the propagation of slavery can 
only be successfully resisted by the propagation 
of freedom. It is this mission, arrogated by Great 
Britain as peculiarly hers, which has conferred on 
her the preponderance she holds in almost every 
portion of the earth. She has swayed it with an 
iron hand, but everywhere of late years Anglo- 
Saxon justice, civilization, and Christianity, 
wherever they prevailed, have allowed every 
man to feel the comfort of laboring for himself, 
and he has labored all the better for his country. 

Great Britain has her hands full in christian- 
izing, civilizing, and improving, for commercial 
usefulness, the old continents. She must leave 
to us the regeneration of the new one; and tiiis I 
find, from a paper in a late Westminster Review, 
marked by the editor with an unusual notification 
ascribing it to " «)i able and distinguished contrih- 
utur," seems to be the opinion of some of the 
great men of England. This eloquent writer, de- 
scribing the missions of what he calls " the four 
Empires," Russia, France, Great Britain, and 
the United States, assigns its office to the latter 
in the following passage: 

" And it may once for nil bo arssuniod tliat the liuman rnco, 
wliatover CiUiinets or Parliaments may tliiiik of it, will nut 
be driven fniiii their inevitable course. The work which 
has begun so largely will so forward. The A^iatio inde- 
pendence which survives will narrow down and grow fee- 
bler, and at la^t die. Tlie will and the intellect of the mora 
advanced races will rule in duo time over that wliolc con- 



15 



Unent. The genius of France will follow the shores of the 
Mediterranean ; the line of kingdoms which divides the 
.empires of England and Russia will grow thinner, till their 
frontiers touch. In spite of Clayton-Bulwer treaties, and 
Dallas-Clarendon interpretations of them, the United States 
will stretch their shadow ever further south. Revolution 
will cease to tear the empire of Montezuma. The falling 
Republics of Central America will not forever be a tempta- | 
tion, by their weakness, to the attacks of lawless ruffians, i 
The valley of the mighty Amazon, which would grow corn ^ 
enough to feed a thousand million mouths, must tail at last 
to those who will force it to yield Its treasures. The ships 
which carry the commerce of America into the Pacific, carry, 
too, American justice and American cannon as the preach- 
ers of it. The Emperor of Japan supposed, that by Divine 
right, doing as he would with his own, he might close his 
country against his kind ; that when vessels in distress were 
driven into his port, he might seize their crews as slaves, 
.>r kill them as unlicensed trespassers. An armed squad- 
ron, with the star-spangled banner flying, found its way into 
the Japan waters, and his serene Majesty was instructed 
that in nature's statute-book there is no right conferred on 
any man to act uurigiiteously, because it is his pleasure ; 
that, in their own time, and by their own means, the upper 
powers will compel him, whether he pleases or not, to 
bring his customs into conformity with wiser usage." 

" The starting-point in this new career is the re- 
sumption of the progress which received its im- 
pulse in the revokilion tending to the deliverance 
of the white laboring class of this country from 1 
the superincumbent weight of African slavery. 
This redemption of our own race from its vassal- 
age under slavery has been brought to a stand- 
still, and six millions of our free white kindred 
endure deprivation, corporeal and intellectual, 
from the slave occupation of the soil and of the 
pursuits which would add to their means of living 
and their sources of mental improvement. Nei- 
ther the slave owners, nor the slave States, are 
responsible for the arrest of the enfranchisement 
which promised blessings to the toilers of both 
races. For, whether as a slave or free man, the 
presence of multitudes of the black race is found 
to be fatal to the interests of our race ; their antag- 
onism is as strong as that of oil and water, and 
so long as no convenient outlet, through which 
the manumitted slave can reach a congenial cli- 
mate and country willing to receive him, is af- 
forded, the institution of slavery stands on com- 
pulsion. But let me suppose Central America — 
tempting in gold and every production of the trop- 
ical soil to stimulate exertion, with a climate in- 
noxious only to the black man — were opened up 
to him, under circumstances to advance him in 
the scale of huinanity, how long before masters 
in all the temperate slave States would make com- 
positions to liberate them on terms that would in- 
demnify them for transplantation .' Hundreds of 
more benevolent owners would, from a sense of 
public good and for conscience sake, by wills, or 



by deeds of emancipation, make this deliverance, 
if the General Government would take the charge 
of the deportation to the region it might acquire 
for them — a gradual and voluntary emancipation 
by individuals, if not by States, would thus in 
time be accomplished. I hold that it is the duty 
of the nation to offer this boon to slaveholders and 
to the slave Statt s to enable thein to have complete 
control of the subject, which is the source of so 
much anxiety and mischief to them. 

What a change would soon be wrought in the 
condition of Maryland and Virginia, Tennessee 
and Kentucky, and in my own State, Missouri, 
if a smooth way were opened into the heart of 
the tropics — prodigal of wealth in the soil, in fhe 
mines, and in the forests; where the labor of the 
robust and skillful freedman, assisted by the cap- 
ital and instruction, and inspired by the energy 
of enterprising American merchants, miners, or 
planters, would start everything into life. The 
mixed condition of the four different classes which , 
in our grain-growing States, obstruct each other; 
the masters dependent on the slaves, the slaves on 
their masters; the free negroes hanging on the 
skirts of both; while the great mass, the free white 
laborers, are cast out, in a great measure, from em- 
ployment and all ownership in the soil, would be 
succeeded by the most useful of all the tillers of the 
earth, small freeholders and an independent ten- 
antry. The influx of immigrants from Europe 
and the North, with moderate capital already run- 
ninginto Maryland and Virginia, would, as these 
States sloughed the black skin, fill up the rich 
region around the Chesapeake bay, the noblest 
bay in the v/orld, fed by the most beautiful rivers, 
and brooded over by the most genial climate, and 
make it fulfill the prediction of Washington, who 
said , slavery abolished , it would become " the gar- 
den of America." The wilderness shores of the 
great inland sea, now almost as silent as in the 
days of Powhatan, would be alive with popula- 
tion; and the waters, now covered with swans, 
wild geese, and wild ducks, would be covered with 
sails and kept in commotion by the rush of steam- 
ers over them. The great rivers that run to waste 
over many latitudes of the healthful temperate zone 
would thunder with machinery, and the little Mer- 
rimac in Massachusetts, which, though frozen half 
the year, produces ninety millions of manufac- 
tures, would find more than a hundred rivals in 
giant streams which are precipitated in the Chesa- 
peake. The mountains would give to the hand of 
free labor boundless wealth in coal, salt, and ores, 
and their surface in pasturing innumerable herds 
and flocks. The plains and valleys would teem 
with grain, the lowlands with meadow, and the 



16 



Old Dominion, instead of being " the lone mother 
of dead empires," would resume her hereditary 
Crown and nascent strength, imparting new 
growth to all her offspring Stales. Tiie noble 
ambition which once led the way to p'.f-ominence 
in this great Confederacy must again bo attained 
by a love of liberty, by love of justice^ by a mag- 
nanimous patriotism, prompt taimalcc any sacri- 
fice of temporary convenience for the grrat moi'trf 
and political principles, the fountlnUca '^' free in- 
stitutions. The attempt to enf; r : iavery in 
Kansas and Central America by '.-^ v,ord,and 
thus make the whole intermedial' .sj..v i on the 
continent fall under its ascendency, v.ill fail. 
There is no Mohammed to esta! 'i a do- 



minion, nor is this age — the age of Christian 
strength and popular power — one to succumb to 
slavery propagandist prophets. Indeed, the Mos- 
lems all over the world have fallen so low, under 
the influence of this part of their creed, that they 
are obliged to surrender, and take the law from 
the accursed nations they stigmatize as Franks. 
The civilized world is at war with the propagation 
of slavery, whclher by fraud or by the sword; 
and those who look to gain political ascendency 
on this continent by bringing the weight of this 
system, like an enormous yoke, not to subject the 
slaves only, but also their fellow-citizens and 
kindred of the same blood, have made false augu- 
ries of the signs of the. times. 



